Sleeping Pills
by heypandora
Summary: angela-centric : . She takes sixteen sleeping pills now because, God knows, dreaming stopped being a gift a long, long time ago and now she just wants to get it over with.


**Warning: **_Gabriel Gray spoilers for early season three.  
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Every night she wakes up, screaming (blood, blood, so much blood, _cruel_ intentions, power, him, that little thing inside her can not be trusted) and wakes her husband. He stops her beating her stomach to get that thing out of her and tells her its okay. She wants to stop dreaming about it.

When it comes out, she tells him to lock it up and throw away the key. She tells him to take that filthy thing away, away from here. (She wants to scream '_kill—it'_ but even she hasn't become that heartless yet).

"Never—_again_," she hisses, stressing to him across the hospital room, after the baby's been torn from her, "_Never_—_ever_—again."

She doesn't want monsters for sons. She doesn't want things to rip and tear and burn, burn this world no, no, no, no, she wants sons (and daughters, though that's aiming too high) just not like this. He strokes her hair and promises, "Never," knowing full-well that that it a lie.

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Little Nathan (she's already decided on it: Nathan, from the Hebrew, meaning _He Gave_ and _God's Gift_. It seems elegant) fills her with hope. Dreams with him are cold, destined, no room for the improvised, but loving none the less. Dreams of him are hopeful but still so morally grey, like her life in general, really.

Her husband smiles to her and says, "What do you dream?"

"Law," she replies, running her fingertips along her stomach, "and loyalty."

"Perhaps I'll have my politician after all."

(There's other, worse dreams though, like that one with big bang, screaming, hating, death, but she tries her hardest not to dream that one and dream of merely her husband getting his politician and their family's immediate happiness.)_  
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Warmth washes over her, and she hears the sea. Love, she supposes, but she wouldn't know. This boy growing inside of her (she touches her stomach and sees nothing and almost panics for a moment before she remembers this is just a dream) is not like Nathan, too warm and trusting.

"You think I could save the world?" he behind her, or she supposes that it's him, against her back. She itches to ask who/are/you/boy and she wants to look at him and see, but doesn't (she loves a good surprise) and instead answers him.

"I think the tides are changing."

She wakes up and tells her husband her water broke.

(Peter: she lies to her husband and says she picked it for 'Apostle of God', though she chooses it for Peter Pan. She never wants this one to grow up, so it seems fitting.)

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Little boy Gabriel (she laughs at the name and sings, **Peter**, Nathan, _Gabriel_, one of these things is not like the others) is the son of watch-smith and a woman who collects snow-globes. More peaceful than life as a son of a politician, she's sure, though it doesn't seem as elegant.

The Company lends her one of their agents, Claude, so she can see him, watch him without giving herself away to them (for the time being). Claude is bitter; though Thompson tells her he's always bitter, nothing new. He grips her waist and watches domesticated lulls of people and complains.

"You don't enjoy normal, peaceful homes like this?" she asks, whispering, as her give-away son eats waffles for dinner with these mundane people in their mundane life and wonders for a moment if she gave the wrong son away (Peter would've enjoy this, she thinks).

He laughs, "Our kind shouldn't. Going too far into irony territory."

She supposes he has a point and leaves.

(—_and dreams that night of him and only him and blood and death and torture that she should be use to already but she really isn't and_—)

She starts taking sleeping pills. She's getting too old for this.

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Linderman tells her a grander scheme is happening ("I know you've been dreaming, _Angela_,") and she sells her soul to the devil because, really, that's the only payment she has. She pushes for their destiny and tries to believe so profusely that _this is right_ and that _they're martyrs, really_ except she's made no plan of dying.

Biggest bang since the Big One, she laughs to herself,

(_and then cries_).

She dreams of death and death only that night and thinks _what the hell have we set in motion?_

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Nathan called her screaming, crying, ranting 'Meredith-is-dead-mum-she's-dead-there-was-a-fire-and-now—' so she knows it's time to fix this. Meredith was always a mistake for him; was never meant to be a politician's wife. She was too proud of her mistakes.

Thompson calls her up and asks what is to be done. "File the reports, leave out anyway connected to us, and bury the poor woman and the child."

"The fire left no body, and your granddaughter survived, Mrs. Petrelli."

She stops for a moment (thinks about asking 'how?' but decides that, really, she'd rather not know) and sighs, "She is no use to us, declare her dead, do what you want with her," and, before he can say anything else, she hangs up. Thompson always like having control over _them_, he'll having a special child (with high possibly, because no one can be sure) to only himself.

Quiet frankly, she would've liked a girl in the family; there are too many boys and boys-to-come, if her dreams are anything to go by (which they are), but they've been pushing for this story's publishing date and God knows, they don't need any more plot holes.

Her granddaughter is just one more personal sacrifice, just one more unneeded distraction on the path to the future that _will_ come.

(—_beat and scream and broken back in place and on the ice cold autopsy table breathing but not_ _because she just shouldn't be and, oh God, where's her innocence_?—)

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She takes sixteen sleeping pills now because, God knows, dreaming stopped being a gift a long, long time ago and now she just wants to get it over with.

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_NOTES_:

**1.** – Gabriel/Nathan/Peter brotherhood is awesome. I love it. Apparently I called it ages ago, but I don't really remember. Made Gabriel the oldest just 'cause. I suck at writing Angela. Arthur is too kind in my writing. I don't pull off Heroes.

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